Fookn Conversation - Talking About “Academicky” Stuff

In Episode 55 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr.  Heather Stone an Associate Professor who holds the Nalley E.P./LEQSF Endowed Professorship in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. She has over fifteen years of experience in education and has developed curricula for K-12, college, and community projects. The curriculum is derived from the oral histories she collects with and alongside different coastal communities who are losing their land due to climate change. We discussed the following: oral history methodologies, the lived experiences of rural communities during the desegregation of K-12 public schooling system, developing a global perspective with teacher candidates, collaborative interdisciplinary projects, bringing community oral history education via virtual reality to the K-12 science classroom, her documentary film Isle of Memories, and so much more.

In Episode 54 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Krista McCracken an award winning public historian and archivist. They work as a Researcher/Curator at Algoma University’s Arthur A. Wishart Library and Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre, in Baawating (Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario) on the Robinson-Huron Treaty territory, the traditional territories of the Anishnaabeg, specifically the Garden River and Batchewana First Nations.  Krista’s research and podcast focus on community archives, residential schooling system, access, and outreach. We discussed the following: history of the residential and day schooling systems, the creation and evolution of the Shingwauk Residential School, decolonial archival futures, educational programs and services provided at and through the Centre, role of the Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association, the original Shingwauk Project of 1979 and the visionary impact of 1981 Shingwauk Reunion, the award winning exhibitions, and so much more.

Fooknconversation talking about “Academicky” Stuff Description for Episode 53 (Dr. Maria Luiza Süssekind): In Episode 53 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Maria Luiza Süssekind a Professor, mother and grandmother, feminist and activist, and writer from the Global South. She currently does research and teaches at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro State. She is a member of the council for Human Rights policies of the Ministry of Education. We discussed the following: lived experiences as a visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia and University of Ottawa, studying autobiographical research, International Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies, navigating and negotiating her undergraduate and graduate studies in Brazil, Deleuze and Guattari, Michel de Certeau, Marx, poststructuralism, plurilingualism, emergence and impact of Brazilian everyday life studies, nets of knowledge, epistemicide, settler colonialism, her documentary Keep Me Away from this Father, and so much more.

In Episode 52 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Bryan Smith a Lecturer in Humanities and Social Sciences education at James Cook University. His research looks at anti-racist and decolonising readings of humanities and social sciences education. Specifically, his work critically interrogates place, colonial and racialized logics in curriculum practice, and the convergence of history, geography, and citizenship education in re-imagining local and global places. His current line of work looks at the making of settler place and how everyday features of the urban landscape writes settler possession into the material and symbolic spaces of communities. We discussed the following: troubling his lived experiences as a white newcomer settler immigrant to Thul Garrie Waja (Townsville, Australia), memorial geographies of invasion, curriculum as invader, walking the stories of colonial ghosts, normalizing place renaming practices of settler communities, settler anxieties, critical toponomy, social studies, ethical responsibilities, and so much more.

In Episode 51 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Shirley & Dr. Hargreaves. Both are Research Professors at Boston College. Dr. Dennis Shirley is a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. Dr. Hargreaves is Visiting Professor at UOttawa and Co-Director of a Canadian Playful Schools Network.  They have collaborated as writers, teachers, speakers, and advisers for almost 20 years. We discussed some of the following issues: lived experiences as transnational migrants and academics, collaborations with ministries of education, school board leaders and teachers in Alberta, Ontario, England, and United States,  life transitions, the failure to engage white working class communities, intersectionality, rethinking sympathy versus empathy, researching intergenerational macro and micro educational, historical, philosophical, political, and religious contexts during what they have titled  The Age of Identity, their fifth co-authored book, and so much more.

In Episode 50 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Stephen Hurley the Founder and Chief Catalyst at voicEd Radio. Combining a life-long love of radio and an intense 30-year career in public education, Stephen Hurley is passionate about finding ways to enliven the public square with vibrant conversations about learning, teaching, schooling, and education in its broadest sense. We discussed some of the following issues: his lived experiences in relation to lunchtime radio stations, makerspaces, creating an online live radio and podcasting ecosystem as a public square, trial and tribulations of being a host, experimenting, negotiating, and adapting to different educational, historical, political, technological contexts as a classroom teacher and teacher educator, open concept classrooms, team teaching, creating conversations among podcasters, researchers, and teachers, life transitions, theology, philosophy, his relationship with music, being a life-long learner, and so much more.

In Episode 49 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Alana Butler an Assistant Professor at Queen’s University. Dr. Alana Butler's research interests include the academic achievement of low-socio economic students, race and schooling, equity and inclusion, and multicultural education. We discussed some of the following issues: growing up in Scarborough, British colonial educational system in the Caribbean, decolonial love, academic streaming, immigrant families learning to transition to Canadian educational systems, pivotal role of teachers, understanding impacts of microaggressions, stereotyping expectations in relation to different racialized students as teachers, navigating the different opportunities and challenges of doctoral studies as international students, becoming an educational researcher, Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2023 rankings, community wealth, Black leadership, a social justice praxis, and so much more.

Fooknconversation talking about “Academicky” Stuff Description for Episode 48 (Dr. Janice Forsyth): In Episode 47 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Forsyth, member of the Fisher River Cree Nation and Professor in Indigenous Land-Based Physical Culture and Wellness in the School of Kinesiology, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia. Drawing on Indigenous epistemologies and research methodologies, Dr. Forsyth’s research combines history and sociology to understand the differing historical and contemporary relationships among sports, culture, power, and politics. We discussed some of the following issues: disenfranchisement and Bill C-31; negotiating culture on a daily basis; working through individual, systemic, and societal racisms as a student and high performance First Nations athlete; the importance of Indigenous student university centres; understanding how organized sports were, and are, used as a tool of assimilation and dispossession of Indigenous land; the legacy of residential schools; oral history research with residential school survivors; (un)learning from the past and questioning approaches to “reconciliation” in sport; Indigenous understandings of health and physical education; decolonization; and so much more.

In Episode 47 Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Sara Florence Davidson, (Sgaan Jaadgu San Glans), a Haida/Settler Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. Her research focuses on Indigenous pedagogies, literacies, and stories. She is the co-author of Potlatch as Pedagogy: Learning through Ceremony and the Sk’ad’a Stories, a picture book series based on her family’s stories which highlights Indigenous pedagogies and intergenerational learning. We discussed some of the following issues: Wildfires in British Columbia and Northwest Territories, evacuations, impacts of climate change, love of literature, her family genealogies and histories, intersections of Indigenous and non-Indigenous pedagogies, ethical ways of collaborating with family, and interconnections among interrelatedness, synergy, research methodology and Haida traditional dancing, artists, carving intergenerational stories with family, reading, teaching, and learning about life, death, implications for teacher education, and so much more.

In Episode 46 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Janet Miller, a Professor Emerita at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research transects the interdisciplinary as well as national and international borders of curriculum theorizing, feminisms and post-inflected versions of autobiography and qualitative research. Her research prioritizes feminist interrogations of autobiography focused on issues of difference, research, collaboration, and writing, especially in relation to potentialities of imagining and enacting curriculum communities without consensus. We discussed some of the following issues: The Global Pandemic, Maxine Greene, past, present, and future narrations of the field curriculum studies and its theorizing in-the-making, the sweaty fight for meaning and responsibility, irresolvable tensions, teaching and doing academic writing as intellectual and aesthetic processes of composing, doctoral supervision, posthumanist entanglements, transnational populist movements, and so much more.